Three Good Things In Health Care Innovation

Paul Hsieh
, ContributorI cover health care and economics from a free-market perspective.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Many of my friends have been posting upbeat “3 Good Things” lists to social media, highlighting positive events in their daily lives. Today, I’d like to post my own set of “3 Good Things” in health care, all related by the theme of under-appreciated innovations.

They described how death rates from coronary heart disease have fallen 38% in the past decade, in large part because of quiet improvements in processes and procedures used to treat patients. When a patient suffers a heart attack due to a blocked coronary artery, doctors can often save the endangered heart muscle if they restore blood flow within 60-90 minutes. Timely treatment is therefore critical.

Doctors and hospitals have thus implemented a variety of methods to streamline the diagnostic and treatment process. For example, paramedics can now perform an EKG as soon as they reach the patient and electronically transmit the results immediately to the ER staff, rather than waiting until the ambulance arrives at the hospital. Emergency physicians and cardiologists have reduced the number of phone calls necessary to decide whether or not a patient was a suitable candidate for the artery-opening procedures. Lawyers found ways to streamline the consent forms for patients.

No single improvement was earth-shattering, but the precious minutes saved by these and other steps added up:

At Yale-New Haven Hospital, where half the patients used to have to wait at least 150 minutes before their arteries were opened, the median time is now 57 minutes. At the Mayo Clinic and at major academic centers like NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, it is 50 minutes...

As Dr. Eric Peterson explained in the article, “Heart disease mortality is dropping like a stone. This is a reason why.”

2) Improvements in matching kidney transplant donors with recipients

The second “good thing” was discussed in the recent Freakonomics podcast, “Make Me A Match.”